


In Arms

by JazzRaft



Series: In Weakness & In Strength [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Gen, Minor Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-29 00:29:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12619032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: Prompto tries so hard to keep the code out of sight and out of mind. It's hard to pretend when it's right there in front of him.





	In Arms

**Author's Note:**

> for an anonymous request [here](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/167091171277/may-i-request-a-cor-prompto-fic-where-prompto)

“Kick his ass for me, nerd!”

“Try not to hurt yourselves.”

Prompto took the rallying words to heart, bouncing out his knees and grinning in anticipation. Gladio cocked a grin as quick as Prompto’s own gun, rolling his eyes at their audience. “Favoritism, huh?” he snorted. “Thought you were supposed to be teaching him how to be impartial, Iggy.”

“Thought _you_ taught me that there was no being impartial in a fight,” Noctis crowed back before Ignis could craft together an excuse.

“Yeah, um, about that fight? Is it going to happen here or…?”

Prompto was eager for the practice. He’d only just started venturing into sparring matches with his friends, finally feeling confident enough in the results of his own training to challenge them. It was mostly with Gladio when they did spar, the Shield having the most experience and patience for the practice between the four of them. He knew how to adapt to the distinct style of each opponent that he was tasked with schooling, making him both an easy board to work off of and a fair challenge for advancing one’s own techniques in order to conquer him.

Gladio huffed out a breath like a dualhorn readying its charge. He called his greatsword and slowly advanced, eyes snapping forward and turning hard as he focused. Prompto braced himself with a breath, summoning his gun and loading it with dummy rounds while Gladio gave him the time. Once the chamber snapped shut, Gladio’s pace quickened and he brought the blunted edge of the practice sword down with barely a warning shout.

Prompto ducked low and rolled left, tumbling smoothly across the soft dirt and leaving only a kick of dust for the greatsword to cleave through. He lifted his gun for a quick shot too hastily, misjudging Gladio’s balance. The swordsman pulled his blade along the dirt in a heavy arc, following Prompto’s retreat and forcing him to make another as it hit the ground, right at his heels.

One of the earliest things his teachers in the Crownsguard had taught him was to keep his distance. Once his proficiency for firearms became apparent, his lessons were tailored toward evasion tactics first _,_ precision shooting next. His goal in battle would always be to get himself clear of a skirmish in order to bully the enemy from afar. Get enough distance for the sliver of time he needed to take the shot. While his bullets were virtually limitless in the vacuum of Noct’s power, the Crownsguard taught him never to waste one. He might have another bullet, but he may not have another opportunity to use one if he missed.

He was put on the defensive immediately, which was exactly where Gladio knew he needed to be. The match consisted of more tuck n’ rolls than sharp shooting, but Prompto didn’t mind. Noctis was rooting for him at the edge of the arena, calling out tips and cheats he’d learned himself for taking down the Shield. The battle even had Iggy’s attention, keen eyes attuned to every detail of movement, gauging the development of Prompto’s skills with subtle little nods of approval. And he even had Gladio breaking a sweat for once, exhausting him the more he forced him to move and catch up with his evasions.

He was flying high, tossing out tiny taunts here and there to instigate Gladio’s heavier attacks, only to dance clear of the blows to pop off dummy shots where he could take them. While the battle wasn’t his yet, Prompto felt accomplished, felt like he was finally starting to come into his own if he could last this long against Gladio. He felt like all the sweat and scratches and his own searing resentment for all that he couldn’t achieve was finally paying off. He’d been patient, he’d worked through it all, and now he had the Prince’s favor and his friends’ respect.

He was happy. He _fit_.

At least until his arm was caught beneath the blunt tip of Gladio’s sword, chipping himself out from under another blow a little too late to avoid the bruise. Gladio seemed to feel it well before Prompto, and he hadn’t even been the receiver of the hit. He hissed through a curse, just a hair before Prompto registered the pain and let it burst out in a howl. He bounced in a circle, shaking his arm as if he could shake off the future bruise and sounding like a dog yapping from a stepped on tail.

“You gonna live, tough guy?” Gladio’s lips turned up in a smile, apologetic and amused by the animated flailing.

“Yeah! Yeah, fine… Oww! It’s cool, just gotta – fff – walk it off…”

Warm laughter preceded Noctis as he warped quickly to join them in the middle of the arena, leaving Ignis to shake his head in exasperation and follow like a normal person across the dirt. “Thought he lopped off a limb for a second,” Noctis chuckled, extending a hand to Prompto’s bruised arm. “Here, let me call up some ice to put on it, just to be safe.”

“No! No, err, it’s fine. Really. Not even a flesh wound.”

He gripped his wounded wrist, careful to keep his fingers tight over the wristband concealing the afflicted area. The growing bruise ached hot and huge beneath his skin, but the cold truth of the ink above it stung far worse. Prompto laughed it off, shaking out his arm and flexing his fingers and pretending that it didn’t hurt like all hell.

“Nice hit there, big guy!”

He deflected, praised Gladio in spite of every protest against it. But Noctis needled into the man and Ignis offered his constructive criticisms, and the spotlight was turned off of Prompto. He’d gotten good at that. He poked in a few wisecracks amidst the easy cajoling and camaraderie, holding his arm behind his back as casually as he could, careful to extend the one that wasn’t hurt to accept the water bottle Gladio offered.

“Quick on your feet, I’ll give you that,” Gladio said, batting him on the shoulder as he walked by.

“ _Just_ that?” Prompto whined. “Come ooon, you can give me more than that, can’t you?”

“You get one for every match,” Noctis told him. “No more, no less.”

“Someone’s got to teach you some humility.” Gladio curved a smirk at Ignis, another jab at his supposed failure in educating the prince.

“Must leave at least _some_ work for you to do.”

“Don’t go doing me any favors.”

“You guys can fight about it at the arcade.” Noctis flitted between them, picking up his jacket from the sidelines and bouncing towards the exit tunnel. “There’s a new Justice Monsters machine for co-op. Best two out of three and one of you wins.”

Ignis rolled his eyes, but no one missed the indulgent upturn at the edges of his mouth. “A pinball machine is hardly a decent judge of academic character.”

“What? You afraid it’s going to give you a bad grade?”

They made their way down the tunnel, elbows prodding into ribs and palms clapping over shoulders. Noctis paused mid-step when he noticed the absence of Prompto’s airy touch at his back, his erratic, bobbing orbit surrounding every step he took. His eyes turned confused as they cast back in search of him. Prompto was ready with an excuse before he could ask if he was alright.

“Sorry, I forgot something.” He made a vague gesture back at the training yard and all the rooms that trickled off of it. “I’ll catch up with you in just a sec!”

He hurried back down the tunnel, waving his arm to encourage them to go on ahead. He could feel their eyes following his retreat, could feel the whole city, the whole damn country watching him. Trying to find what he was hiding.

He ducked into the locker room, afraid to cross the field to the infirmary lest his friends see him and insist on trying to help. How quickly that kindness would curdle if they saw that he was lying to them.

His breath abandoned him in a shiver, feeling the cold tendrils of fear slipping between the ridges of his spine. It was so easy to forget it was there some days. Some days, just like today, where he let himself get drawn into the illusion that he belonged where he was, that he let himself think he deserved this every day complacency by right of being born Lucian, he would forget everything he saw in the mirror each night. It was so, _so_ easy to follow the ease with which his friends joked, so easy to make them laugh, so easy to pretend that was what he was made to do.

“Damnit,” Prompto muttered, pressing against the barcode as he tested the pain over the locker room sink.

He could practically see the bruise already. He could feel where the boundaries of the pain ended, could imagine how the black welt would spread over the ink. Maybe the bruise would be dark enough that it would hide the code completely.

It hurt worse than he let on. Gladio would feel awful if he knew just how much. Prompto cringed at the thought of how he would feel if he knew _what_ he had hurt. Would his furrowed brow turn down into a vengeful V? Would he take pride in the wound over pity? Would his soft frown turn into a snarl? Would the big paws that cradled his arm for a careful, apologetic examination, suddenly grow claws? Dig into the branded skin and scrape it clean?

“You’re making it worse.”

Prompto nearly jumped right out of the skin he was so desperate to escape. The low thunder of the Marshal’s voice was a familiar sound over at the Crownsguard base. It was not, however, easy to get used to. Especially not when it just came out of nowhere like that.

Prompto pressed a hand to his chest to try and contain his heart hammering against it. He spun around to find Cor standing in the middle of the room as if he’d been there for an eternity. He stood as still as one of the stone effigy’s guarding the Citadel, eternally stoic and motionless and immovable. He looked like he’d been grown right from the cement floor, the weathered lines of his face as cracked as old earth, but just as stubborn as it, staying right where he thought he ought to be.

“Shiva!” Prompto swore, trying to compose himself – which would always be a failure before the man that looked like he was born with that indifferent scowl on his face. “I mean, hi Commander! Or, err, sir. Umm…”

He tried to arrange his limbs into the proper position for greeting a superior officer and gave a clumsy half bow. Cor didn’t seem overly endeared by it. The inscrutable silence was always too much for Prompto to bear. Cor was always there at Crownsguard training when the warfront didn’t demand his command. There were days where Prompto never outright saw him, but he knew he was there. Somewhere. Overseeing the recruits and the officers both. Sometimes he only revealed himself with a deep, barking correction to a trainee’s form, startling the poor whelp more than helping them. Most times, Prompto thought that was the whole point. The battlefield was unpredictable. They had to be ready for anything. Other times, Prompto thought that Cor just got some sadistic satisfaction out of hearing the runts squeak.

“You, uhh… been here long? …Sir?”

He didn’t like quiet. He’d lived alone with it for far too long. It was poor company for a stranger in his own home.

Cor’s chin jutted towards Prompto’s arm, his neck barely moving to make the gesture. “Don’t poke at it. That’s not going to make it go away.”

Prompto’s mouth went dry and his skin felt cold. Of all the people he didn’t want seeing his arm, short of condemning himself to the King of Lucis, the Commander of the Crownsguard was his greatest pride and his greatest fear. It was Cor who decided if one was good enough to serve the Crown. It was Cor who held his future in his crossed arms. It was Cor who killed MT assassins every day that they threatened the life of his king. It was Cor who cleaned off oily black blood from that sword each night.

He would never deserve mercy from him. He lied about who he was, infiltrated the ranks of the Crownguard, installed himself at the side of the heir apparent, gained his trust knowing full well that Noctis didn’t know _what_ he was trusting himself to. The barcode branded him a traitor. That was all any of them would ever see if they found it. Prompto could feel his very blood quaking in his veins. He hoped it didn’t translate to his skin or his smile or his voice. It sounded steady enough.

“Right. I was just about to put some ice on it. I’ll be out of your hair in no time!”

Cor stared at him, unblinking and unknowable. His eyes didn’t leave his face as his head shifted in another nod, inclining towards the correct direction. “The infirmary’s back out there.”

“Is it?” Prompto knew his voice sounded higher than it was supposed to. He cleared his throat to drag it back down an octave. “That it is. Must have gotten hit harder than I thought.”

He laughed like he always did when he was afraid. But it didn’t work on Cor like it worked on his friends. The man didn’t laugh. He was starting to think he never did. Prompto gulped down his fear and dismissed himself as politely and as quickly as his failing subtlety would allow. He didn’t know if Cor had planned to stand as a barricade between him and escape when he appeared from the stone, but it served the Marshal well in catching Prompto as he passed. He didn’t even see the man move, just felt the firm grip snap onto his arm like an iron shackle.

Excuses immediately panicked themselves out of Prompto’s throat, tumbling over the damning mark in a desperate avalanche, trying to bury it under all the cold it made him feel. It was just a tattoo, he got it when he was younger and dumber, he was always dumb, everyone knew that, he was getting it removed when he could afford it, he didn’t know what it meant when he picked it out at the parlor because, again, he was dumb. It was nothing, just a fake, just like him, just playing pretend because he was stupid stupid _stupid_ …

“I don’t care what’s on your arm. I care how you use it.”

Prompto had gone blind with the panic of losing his stolen life. The words were unexpected, and they cleared the crackling darkness of his fear from the edge of his eyes. Cor braced his arm between his hands, his eyes sealed to the reddening mark between the printed lines of code. His grip was firm, but it wasn’t cruel. It didn’t hurt. It didn’t try to break off the arm that was crafted to kill instead of kid with men that were trained to kill things just like him.

“You got clumsy with your shots,” Cor said, sinking subtle pressure here and there to test the extent of the injury. “You could have had him down five minutes before he got a hit in.”

“Y-You’ve been here the whole time?”

Prompto didn’t know why he was surprised. The man was like a ghost, immortal in undead scrutiny as he haunted the fringes of conflict big and small. Cor didn’t answer him. He didn’t answer questions that people already knew the answers to. It was a waste of words better threaded together for something that mattered.

“Ice,” he said, curt and to the point. “Wrap a small pack around it until you get home. Don’t be stupid and twist it up on game controllers. Use a potion in case of emergency, otherwise let it heal on its own. You need to be at your best if you’re going to protect Noctis.”

He released his arm, letting Prompto push the wristband back over the mark. Cor returned to his default state, arms crossed, eyes forward, piercing right into Prompto’s own. There was no room for argument. Not that Prompto was eager to.

“I understand, sir.”

“Do you? Because for a Crownsguard whose place is always at the King’s side, you just let him walk off without you.”

Prompto paused, stunned for a moment. Because that almost sounded like the cadence of a joke. Cor’s face gave nothing away though, persisting in its impassive immortality. Whether it was teasing or not, it made Prompto smile. He nodded, bowed neatly, and left with more gratitude for the Marshal’s approval than he thought could fit in his own heart.


End file.
